On His White Horse
by she blushes in ink
Summary: Bilbo Baggins didn't trust petty mystics, but her mother was no petty mystic. Upon Bilbo Baggins' birth, the name of her soulmate appears in sunlight. And that name is Thorin Oakenshield. She waits patiently for her Prince Charming to come along — and then finds out he's not a prince at all. Genderbent!Thilbo; human AU.
1. Prologue

**On His White Horse**

Bilbo Baggins didn't trust petty mystics, but her mother was no petty mystic. Upon Bilbo Baggins' birth, the name of her soulmate appears in sunlight. And that name is Thorin Oakenshield. She waits patiently for her Prince Charming to come along — and then finds out he's not a prince at all. Genderbent!Thilbo; human AU.

* * *

We all have to let go of the Prince Charming complex and realize he doesn't necessarily exist in the package we assume he'll come in.

_Gabrielle Union_

* * *

**W**hen Bilbo was young, her mother always told her of the whisper in the trees, the light in the grass that day.

That day was the day Bilbo was born, and it was a late September day lost in the late 80s.

'It was dawn,' Belladonna Tooks would say, sitting upright in her favourite chair, a family heirloom, 'and you had just thrashed your way out of my stomach. And I looked outside, and I saw the most peculiar scene. The sun was shining up from behind the hill, and it inched up until it was amongst the trees, and the sunlight poured through the gaps in the trees and the sunlight and the shadows spelled "THORIN OAKENSHIELD."'

By the time Bilbo Baggins was five, she knew the story as well as her own heart, and learned to write the name Thorin Oakenshield as confidently as her own, in her unsure five year old handwriting. And when her writing was surer, corrected by many a hired hand, she affixed Thorin's last name to her own. Bilbo Baggins-Oakenshield.

In the long, boring stretches of private school that made up her childhood and teenage years, she sketched out the face of her soul mate. His face had many different configurations. In one sketch, his face was soft and feminine, with eyes nearly as big as her own, framed by hair the red of a Sharpie; in another (that she liked far better), his face was gruff and strong jawed, the eyes thin and black.

By the time she was in college, she had accumulated so many different sketches of his face that she had run out of new options, and instead opted to sketch Thorin Oakenshield as the Sphinx.

She spent every waking moment dreaming of Thorin Oakenshield, and every stretch of sleep dreaming of him too.

It was not because she could not find anyone else. No, she had grown into a beautiful woman, with honey gold curls and skin that never broke out even in her teenage years, and her voice was always sweet and gentle, as all of higher society's men wanted in their wives; and though her voice had been tamed carefully by years and years of deportment lessons, her spirit had not been.

And of course, she had shared kisses of young, clueless love in elementary school, and those obligatorily awkward, stray dates in college, but they had never been very serious, for no one could overtake the legend that Thorin had become in her heart.

She thought often of finding him. Her family was rich enough to afford private investigators - her family was rich enough for her to spend the rest of her life as a lady of leisure, in fact - and with the advent of phone books and internet it would not be so impossible to find Thorin Oakenshield, surely.

Only one thing stayed her hand. Her mother's words, whispered like a secret into her eight year old ear - 'You must never look for Thorin. Thorin will come to you. If you should search for Thorin, Thorin will be lost forever.'

Belladonna Took had been a fervent traditionalist and believed that the new technology of her time was the work of the devil, but her daughter listened to her, and never looked, for all she dreamed. She believed in her mother with a faith neither higher education nor sound reasoning could sway.

But now, aged twenty four and staring out at the woman bowed stiffly on her porch, Bilbo wonders, for the first time in her life, if her mother was wrong.

* * *

**Disclaimer: **I don't have anything to do with The Hobbit.

**A/N:** I should really be updating Misericordia, but Thilbo has taken over my mind...So! This is really me trying to gauge interest. I know total genderbending isn't very popular in most slash pairings, so I thank you for wandering out of your comfort zone! If you like this idea and would like to see this continued, please drop me a few words of encouragement; I could really use some! Thanks.


	2. Chapter 1

_Earlier that day..._

Bilbo Baggins' twenty fourth birthday dawns bright and clear.

The sun has already made its way over the treetops when she wakes. She feeds it a brief, sleepy smile, and slips out of her bed, barefooted and still in her nightgown, leaving his warm body behind in the mess of covers.

She pads her way to the kitchen for her daily cup of coffee; the television blares news in her wake.

And the warm body she left behind is toddling after her.

She yelps when a hand tugs at her nightgown, a gesture that is on the furthest edges of propriety, and her first thought is that she is still a virgin and does not do one night stands. Then -

'Oh. Frodo,' she murmurs, all the tension going out of her in a breath, and smiles a smile clouded with sleep.

'Bilbo!' Frodo chirps, his blue eyes sparkling. She is reminded, for a long, sad moment, of her brother's eyes, and her own sitting down on the couch shakes her from her reverie.

'Come here, darling.' She pats her lap and he acquiesces, clambering until his shoulder bones are digging into her breast.

She sips at her coffee, careful not to hit Frodo's curly head with the cup, but is almost startled into doing just that when Frodo panics.

'Mommy, Mommy, they're talking about people dying!' His voice is too shrill for the morning, she thinks, and she has told him repeatedly that she is not his mother - but she can't bring herself to mind, and smoothes a hand down his hair when the news goes on about some celebrity fire.

'We'll watch something else,' she promises, in her most comforting voice.

Ever since his parents' death, Frodo has been particularly sensitive to death, at an age where children shouldn't understand what it is besides Mommy and Daddy went away and I won't ever see them again. He wakes with nightmares about it, sometimes, but she finds that having Frodo sleep in her bed is a particularly effective way of easing his torments.

She flicks through the channels hastily until she recognises a talking sponge - Rob, or something - that particularly entertains her nephew (or at least, took over the screen when she last tried to watch television), and this Rob's onscreen presence relieves her of the burden of a six year old boy; Bilbo practically jumps off her lap in joy and she drinks her coffee quickly, before Frodo can reclaim her lap.

Frodo is hopping around the living room in his excitement - 'That's your grandmother's chair!' - when the phone rings and Bilbo darts up almost as quickly as Frodo, but not as, and he beats her to the phone, as he always does.

'The Baggins residence,' Frodo says proudly into the phone, sounding much older than he is and drawing a chuckle from his aunt. 'Uncle Gandalf! You want to talk to Auntie Bilbo? She's right here!'

She stares at Frodo for a long, unblinking moment, wondering what she has done recently to warrant a call from Uncle Gandalf - an elderly, pleasant chap, a friend of her parents' and a visitor in her childhood, up until her mother's death.

She does not remember much of him, to be honest, and there are fewer things more awkward than taking calls from family friends who you can hardly remember.

Frodo thrusts out the phone more insistently, and widens his eyes, as if begging his aunt to relieve him of the burden of the phone - as if it were a particularly odious food he wished to be rid of at one of her friends' parties - and she obliges reluctantly.

'Bilbo Baggins speaking,' she says, in a polite effort to buy herself time. A crackling laugh comes from the other side.

'Bilbo Baggins! Why, I have not seen you for years! Happy birthday, Bilbo!'

Her mind stutters. Birthday?

Her voice echoes her mind, lamely: 'Birthday? I'm sorry, Uncle Gandalf, are you sure you have the right Bilbo?'

'Positive!' Gandalf booms. 'It is the twenty second of September, is it not?'

'... Is it?'

She wonders if this is why she spent years in deportment classes.

'Yes, my dear Bilbo! Oh, you are every bit as charming as I remember. I have a few friends who would love to meet you!'

'You have a few friends who would love to meet me?' she near parrots, mental faculty disabled by her rummaging uselessly about for the date.

Has she really become so old?

'Indeed! It has been quite a while since I have introduced anyone to you, has it not?'

Bilbo shudders delicately. She remembers, acutely, when Gandalf tried his hand at finding her friends in her early years of shyness in elementary school, when the girls hated Bilbo for being 'unsightly' and the boys hated her for being hated.

The smitten awkwardness of the 'friend' she had made through Gandalf lasted far longer than the friendship.

Unfortunately, Gandalf takes her being unable to provide an adequate answer in time as a confirmation: 'Great! See you then, Bilbo!' And the phone clicks.

'Gandalf?'

Silence. She groans. 'Shit!' Is a person not allowed time to relive old and painful childhood memories?

_I don't want to entertain tonight! _she thinks, and throws herself on the couch with a huff.

'Shit? Like, the Titanic?' young Frodo asks inquisitively.

She almost smacks herself when she realises Frodo is nearby.

_Yes, a titanic shit,_ she thinks to herself, _acerbically. That is what this is._

* * *

Out of pure sulkiness she does not dress up to entertain, but she is careful to change out of her nightgown, with the stray thought that in a few years, she will not be able to wear her nightgown at home anymore unless she wants to weird the heck out of Bilbo.

In her defiance she chooses instead something that would have been, for her mother, the equivalent of a kitchen apron.

That'll teach Gandalf to try and find me friends, she thinks, stubbornly, as she cooks a sumptuous dinner of breaded chicken atop fettuccine ravioli for Frodo. He won't dare bring anyone else around ever again!

Perhaps it is a little disturbing how proud the thought makes her.

Frodo is practically drooling by the time Bilbo serves him his food, and she looks on with a tender little smile as he wolfs his food down, and then bustles back into the kitchen to plate the leftovers for herself.

Then the doorbell rings.

She has never before so hated hearing her own doorbell ring, and she curses her parents - God rest their souls, she adds as an afterthought - for choosing that deceivingly pleasant ring.

She squeezes her eyes closed and waits for it to go away, but the ring sounds again, she curses under her breath and runs for the door in a most unladylike manner.

And opens the door to twelve strangers, all quite tall - but anyone towers over Bilbo's four foot eleven - all herded by one smug looking Gandalf. (Even after all these years she is able to recognise him.)

'Gandalf,' she greets, voice strained but not unkind, her eyes very pointedly not roving over the strangers. (So all those tutours had done something.)

Gandaf beams. 'Bilbo, my dear fellow! It is good to see you. Ah, you've grown beautiful.' He says it so sincerely that Bilbo is forced to remember that he too was a part of high society at one point, and she inclines her head regally.

'The years have not changed you, dear friend.'

'So stuffy,' chortles one of the strangers. He is brunette, she notices, and rather handsome; he looks the youngest of all of them. 'She would get along great with Aunt.'

'She would, wouldn't she?' returns the man next to the brunette, blonde but with much of the same facial composition. Brothers, perhaps. They share a merry laugh until Bilbo issues a delicate cough.

They look at her strangely, and their eyes light back up. 'Ah! Our apologies. I'm Fili - '

'- and I'm Kili. At your service.'

She inclines her head again at the (evident) brothers. 'How do you do?'

There is an awkward silence following that; apparently, none of the strangers will speak, and she will stand here while Frodo munches away happily and her own food chills.

Lovely.

'Balin,' pipes up a man with a long, white beard. 'My name's Balin. How do you do?'

'It is a pleasure to meet you, Balin.'

'The pleasure is all mine,' he rejoins, and when she extends her hand he kisses it. She beams with an odd, real pleasure at meeting someone able to at least mimic manners.

None of the others offer their names after that, and with a small sigh of resignation she steps aside to let the crowd in.

Only when they have flooded her dining room does she allow herself the small comfort of hitting her head against the door.

* * *

**Disclaimer**: I don't own The Hobbit.

**Author's Notes: **I know that Frodo isn't with Bilbo in The Hobbit, but he's adorable and I wanted him here. SO THERE.

Sorry about the introductions (or lack of thereof.) I won't follow canon entirely, and I admit to needing some help as to characterising the dwarves. If anyone wants to give me brief blurbs of all of their characters, I would actually really appreciate that, to prevent messing up their characters and displeasing everyone with how out of character they are.

Short chapter, I know. They'll get longer as the story goes along and I can introduce more characters/elements, I expect.

As always, your feedback would be much appreciated!


	3. Chapter 2

Her own manners force her into the kitchen after that, but it is, she thinks, her mother's fault that she has been roped into cooking dinner for thirteen. Instilling manners in her and all that.

Cooking dinner for thirteen is bleeding her dry.

_I'm not a restaurant,_ she thinks, but this thought is not strong enough to stop her from cooking the meats that she intended to feed Frodo with for the next two weeks. (He's a growing boy!) She gives them leftover bread to stave off the worst of their hunger and take the edge off her impoliteness, the remnants of one of Frodo's first forays into the kitchen (and later she will note that that was their favourite food of everything she laboured over.)

She makes to offer them the cheap Moscato the Sackville-Bagginses gave her last Christmas, a clear and not at all subtle insult leveled at the affluent atmosphere Belladonna Took and Bungo Baggins could raise their daughter in.

The Sackville-Bagginses. Bilbo scowls.

Longo Baggins was a homely, gentle but passionless creature bewitched into marrying the far more comely but sneaky Camellia Sackville, who had hoped that her husband would inherit his family's considerable fortune. Her surprise when Bungo lived long enough to secure a wife and sire a daughter soured eventually into some sort of infantile hatred, and as if out of spite, she bore a son, Otho, who is the worst of both worlds - that is to say, homely, uninspired and sneaky. The widow and her son continue to make grabs at the family fortune that Bilbo will never understand, as everything has been willed to Frodo.

The last cup almost overflows as she snaps out of her thoughts of her dreadful relatives, and she winces when Gandalf manages to couple this near accident with a piercing glare.

'They won't know the difference,' she argues against Gandalf's disapproving look. 'Five dollar Moscato, Clos des Papes, what do they know?'

'Bilbo Baggins,' he hisses, 'they are your guests and they deserve your best! Whether they know it is your best or not.'

She stifles a grumble and takes the glasses of Moscato, untouched, to the counter top, taking care to avoid being struck by her rowdy guests, and fetches her best wine, which pours itself much faster into the glasses than the Moscato did.

_Good bye, my love_, she thinks, sullenly, as she serves the last guest. _Our love was one in a lifetime._

They cheer and gulp down her best wine without a second thought, cupping the glasses in their hands.

And promptly spit it back out.

'What is this?!' one of them shouts.

'The work of the very devil himself, it must be!'

'Ale! Is there ale?'

'That's my best wine,' Bilbo informs with not a little sadness. They carry on as if they did not hear her.

Seated in her chair, her legs crossed at the ankles and fingers pinching the stem of the glass of five dollar Moscato daintily, she takes a sip before she remembers it is the wine that her dreadful cousin Otho gave her.

An expression half awe and half disgust overtakes her features.

_This is actually good._

She smacks her forehead. _Gods deliver me! What witchcraft is this?_

The clearing of a throat catches her attention and she finds a funny looking man staring at her. He clears his throat and extends his hand.

'I'm Bofur,' he tells her, clearly nervous. 'And you are Bilbo, yes?'

'Yes, I am. It is nice to meet you, Bofur,' she says, warmly, and serves up her friendliest smile for this poor creature, thinking of the numerous times she had met scowling, saggy-skinned and overly made up Russian ladies in her youth. One word in their cold, high voices often sent her into fits of tears.

'It is nice to meet you too,' Bofur parrots dumbly. She widens her smile and relaxes her grip and he gives a shy but sure smile back.

She watches him as he scurries back off into his group. He is charming, she supposes, in his utter sincerity.

'We are one member short,' Gandalf muses.

'There's more of them?' She hopes they are all more like Bofur.

'Just the one,' Gandalf says, cheerily. 'I imagine you two will hit it off splendidly.'

The doorbell rings.

'There she is! Be a dear, Bilbo, and get the door.'

She throws her arms out in exasperation as she walks away, confident that no one can see her, muttering, 'You needn't worry, Gandalf. Being the generous host I am, I'll do everything, down to wiping their arses, as they're clearly incompetent fools who can't be trusted to even enjoy a glass of - ' Her voice dies away at the man in the doorway.

Upon closer inspection, it is a woman and not a man, distinctly female in that she lacks any sort of facial hair and her dark brown hair is pulled back into a bun. But perhaps the observation that she was a man can be forgiven; for she is quite masculine, what with her strong jaw, face heavy with tension and, most noticeably, glaring dark eyes.

She is, Bilbo supposes, handsome, in a way.

'Ah, Thorin, you've made it!' Gandalf greets congenially behind her. Bilbo freezes, but then eases just as quickly. Her hearing failed her. Perhaps she should get a hearing aid. Or maybe Thorin is actually one of the hundred most common names in America.

She doesn't have the heart to doubt it, even if she knows about as many Thorins as she does Bilbos (and for the record, she knows of only herself.)

It's more likely she misheard. Definitely misheard.

The glittering black eyes turn to her. 'Thorin Oakenshield,' the woman says, with a shallow bow. 'At your service.'

* * *

**Disclaimer**: I don't own The Hobbit.

**Author's Notes: **I'm (or try to be) funny now, but I swear that it will be angsty!

I think after this the chapters will be longer. ^^ This could have been longer, definitely... I just felt that it broke best here. The end of this chapter ties in with the end of the prologue.

Plus, Bilbo sort of fainted. XD


	4. Chapter 3

'Mommy is dead! Mommy is dead!' Frodo is wailing through his tears. 'Someone killed Mommy!'

'Hey there, little guy,' Kili is cooing. 'Hey there. Your mommy isn't dead. She's just... very tired, and she needs to rest.'

Frodo's sobbing is so loud that Kili's efforts are futile, but instead of getting upset, Kili just smiles, crosses the room with a long, intent stride, sits, wraps his arms around the child and plops him down in his lap.

Fili is watching his brother with something torn between laughter and adoration in his eyes. 'I never knew you were so maternal,' he teases. Kili spares him a glare.

'You were an awful older brother.'

'An awesome one,' Fili corrects. 'It wasn't my fault you were a little softie. Still are,' he adds, in afterthought.

Frodo is sniffling and his sobs are dying down. He has tired himself out with his crying.

'There, there,' Kili murmurs, and pets Frodo's mass of curls. 'What's your name?'

'Frodo. What happened to mommy?'

'Your mommy is just resting, and she loves you very much.'

'What if she doesn't wake up?' And he begins to cry again.

Kili sighs. It's going to be a long night.

Gandalf slips into the room the exact moment Bofur begins to play his clarinet. He looks at Bofur oddly for a moment. 'You have brought a clarinet on a social call?'

Bofur takes his mouth off the clarinet long enough to defend himself: 'It comes in handy.'

It _is_ coming in handy; Frodo, though clearly still upset, has almost managed to stop his crying altogether.

Gandalf shakes his head, bewildered, and turns to address the delirious child in Kili's lap. 'Frodo, your mother is doing just fine. She is just exhausted, that's all.' He reaches for Frodo's pudgy little hand. 'Come now, and we can feed Thorin, since your mother is not here to.'

Thorin is seated at the head of the table, where Bilbo was sitting not too long ago, just staring out into space.

Frodo bounds straight up to Thorin, bottle of Bilbo's best wine clutched in two hands. 'Hello, miss,' Frodo says, voice still weak with tears but expression brave and cheerful. 'Would you like wine?'

Thorin gives him a soft and startled glance, as if pitying a young servant, but her voice is gruff when she speaks. 'Yes.' She turns to Gandalf, who is standing to her left. 'She looked more like a bimbo than the charming Bilbo you were describing to me.'

Meanwhile, Frodo is struggling to his tiptoes to pour wine into Thorin's glass, but he is still too short. Any other child would have made a noise of frustration, but Frodo is patient.

'Thorin Oakenshield! I will have you know that she is quite charming at her best, and that she will be just what you need to charm Smaug into a confession.'

Finally, Frodo does the unthinkable, and mounts a chair so he is tall enough to pour wine into Thorin's glass, and still glaring at Gandalf she sips tentatively, as if though the wine were beneath her.

Bewilderment overtakes her face, then approval, before she blanks her expression carefully.

If Bilbo had seen, she would have smiled.

* * *

Bilbo wakes to a pair of blue eyes peering at her and arms wrapped around her neck.

'Frodo,' she manages through the neck-embrace. He doesn't hear her. 'Frodo!'

'Mommy!' Frodo tightens his grip until she gasps a little, and then he lets go, sheepishly.

'Bilbo,' she reminds him, gently, and gives him a hug much gentler than the one she just received. 'I'm not your mommy.'

'Bilbo,' Frodo repeats obediently, but Bilbo sighs. She knows Frodo will go back to calling her mommy when he is distressed again.

'What happened, Frodo? What made you so upset?'

'A scary woman was at the door and you fell asleep when you saw her,' he replies, earnestly.

'A scary woman,' Bilbo muses.

_Thorin. Shit._

_Maybe Mother was crazy. She was a Took, after all._

_And so am I. I believed her, didn't I?_

She was a pleasant looking woman, Bilbo recalls.

But she has been waiting all her life for Thorin Oakenshield. Thorin Oakenshield, who was smooth and blonde and suave. Or Thorin Oakenshield, gruff and dark skinned and all fire. Or Thorin Oakenshield, green eyed and quiet and nerdy.

Not Thorin Oakenshield, brunette and formal and... female.

Truthfully, all she wants to do is lie in bed and mourn her lost love, but Frodo is looking at her expectantly. They must still have guests.

'They're still here, aren't they, Frodo?'

He nods, face carefully neutral.

She sighs. 'Let's go, then.' Even though she does not yet know what to feel about the problem that is Thorin Oakenshield.

He walks behind her, as if to shield himself from the strangers, but he comes out of hiding when Kili croons, 'Frodo!'

Bilbo looks at Kili, bewildered, but he just grins. 'Your son is the most adorable little thing.'

She sits down in the chair next to Kili, now convinced that he might make a good ally, and pulls Frodo into her lap. Which she should probably stop doing. He's a growing boy, after all, and he can't sit in her lap forever.

'He's my nephew,' Bilbo corrects, 'but that doesn't mean he isn't my heart.'

Frodo beams at the reassurance. The brunette newcomer - Thorin Oakenshield, apparently, though Bilbo refuses to believe it - looks at Bilbo as if she has just noted her existence. She does not return the look.

Thorin speaks up, surprising everyone. 'Your nephew has very good manners. You have raised him well, Miss Baggins.'

Bilbo inclines her head graciously, still intently not looking at Thorin; Frodo is beaming so hard that all his happiness is pooling red in his cheeks. 'Thank you.' And Bilbo flashes the other woman her most charming smile, which she looks at just a single moment too long for propriety.

Gandalf smiles smugly to himself.

'When Thorin was raising us,' Kili pipes up, 'teachers told her all the time what a menace we were, and she would get so mad she would - ' He falls silent at Thorin's glare.

'Ah. Fili and Kili are your children, then?' she asks Thorin politely, her heart sinking in her chest like a stone.

'She's our aunt,' Fili supplies in lieu of the silent Thorin. 'She raised us, though, after...'

A strange hush falls over the table, and Gandalf clears his throat.

'Ah, yes. Bilbo, as lovely as it is to see you again, dear girl, we came here to speak to you about the Oakenshield fire.'

Bilbo thinks back to the celebrity fire on the news, the one that distressed Frodo so greatly. 'The one that happened today, twenty years ago? The kitchen fire?'

'It was no kitchen fire.' Thorin's voice is so sharp she could cut with it. 'It was arson.'

'And, dear Bilbo, that is where you come in. You have no affiliation to the Oakenshields that Thorin's enemies would know of, and you are charming and innocent enough that you could coax a confession from their leader. The Dragon, they call him.'

'You want me to seduce a criminal?'

Silence.

'Well, yes.'

Bilbo feels faint. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

And instead of exploding like everyone expects, she orders calmly, 'Tell me about what you want me to do.'

'Catch Smaug's eye.'

'And how do I do that?'

'Ingratiate yourself with New York City's elite. He is one of them.'

'And what might happen to me, if I were to be caught in an act of dishonesty?'

'Incineration,' the pleasant chap, Bofur, pipes up.

'Incineration?'

He nods fervently, oblivious to the atmosphere. 'Smaug will tie you up and light you on fire.'

Bilbo stares at Bofur for a long moment.

'Anything else?' Her voice is feeble.

'Or he might call his cronies in and chop you to pieces.'

Gandalf tries to divert Bilbo's attention. 'But you will get a fourteenth of Smaug's fortune.'

Bilbo scowls, still obviously worried. 'I'm not a prostitute, and I am not in need of money.'

'You can call yourself an escort, if you'd like.'

'Gloin!' Gandalf rebukes, but it's too late. Bilbo stands up and storms out of the room.

* * *

**Disclaimer**: I don't own The Hobbit.

**Author's Note**: So now you know what they want Bilbo to do~

Thorin is frosty towards Bilbo in the beginning, so I thought I'd keep that.

At this rate, I'm not sure this will ever evolve into the angsty fic I pictured. I think it's Frodo's corrupting influence.


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